Saylor.org ARTH207: "European Neoclassical Sculpture"

This lecture is entitled Neoclassical Sculpture in Europe. Let's calm down. So today's lecture is obviously about Neoclassical Sculpture in Europe, but before we move on and discuss that subject specifically I wanted to backtrack and take a second to get our bearings and try and understand where we are in terms of sculpture in relation to what we've been looking at so far in this semester and also what's come earlier in art history, and that's why I have some not Neoclassical sculptures on the screen right now. Over here on the left we have something that should be familiar to you. This is by Bernini who we looked at at the beginning of this course and I have that up here because you know Baroque was really a big time for sculpture. There was a lot of sculpture created and that's kind of the most recent point of reference for artists working in the Neoclassical period, sculptors working in the Neoclassical period and Bernini was sort of the real leader of Italian Baroque sculpture and really Baroque sculpture and what would you describe his style as and Baroque sculpture in general? Well in very simple terms you can say it is full of movement, it is full of drama and emotion and dynamism, which is related to movement. So you might remember this is his version of Pluto and Proserpina. It dates to the 1620s and this is an emotional subject, this woman being carried off against her will and there's not just this a sense of movement implied in this sculpture, but it's really complex movement, this kind of spiraling form, forces thrusting against one another right with her hand pushing against his face. There's a lot going on and it's really full of movement and interest and liveliness. That is not what Neoclassical sculptors were interested in. They wanted to get away from this style of sculpture and in fact, they wanted to return to works like this one. This is a sculpture of Apollo. Apollo. It's actually a Roman copy of a Greek sculpture that dates to the 4th century BCE. How would you compare this sculpture of Apollo to this sculpture by Bernini? Well, there's not as much movement. There's not as much drama. There's not as much emotion. It's really a pared-down, rather restrained and dignified, as much as a nude person can be dignified, but it's a real real different approach to sculpture and the human form as well. So this is more what Neoclassical artists were wanting to replicate and that is why I say, let's calm down. They wanted to kind of tone down all of this excitement going on in works like Bernini. Also, you can see that for Neoclassical sculptors who wanted to have that new approach to classicism, it wasn't just about the subject matter because Bernini's subject is classical. This is from classical mythology. It had to also come through in the style. So let's move on really quickly and take a look at another work that is familiar to us. This is Houdon and this is his George Washington. I'll write that down to remind you. Houdon, George Washington. This dates to the 1780s, 1785 to 90s, 96. Now we already looked at Houdon and we know that he's really contemporary with Neoclassical art. He's working around the same time, but you know, he's really more linked with the Enlightenment era and partially that's because of his subject matter, right? He is a sculptor of portraits and so his subject matter is not really classicizing, but his style definitely is and he helped to bring back some of that restraint into sculpture. I think you can see that in this sculpture portrait of George Washington. It's certainly not full of movement and drama and over-the-top emotion. It's a dignified and restrained portrait of this historical figure. So Houdon really helped to to push some of these ideas forward, but again, he's not really Neoclassical because we have a portrait here. This is not a classical subject matter. So that's why we are now going to turn to the work of Antonio Canova, who we saw a little preview of in our intro to Neoclassicism. So here is one of Canova's most famous sculptures and it is a portrait actually of Paulina Borghese as Venus Victorious and it dates 1804 to 1808. Now you might be confused because we just looked at Houdon and I said, well, he's a portrait painter. He's not really working in Neoclassicizing subject matter, but that's what's interesting about this sculpture by Canova. Let me write his name on the screen too. Canova. This is a portrait of a real woman, actually a very prominent woman. She was Napoleon Bonaparte's sister. But what's interesting about this is, you know, it's a portrait of her as Venus Victorious and it's allegorical in that way and it shows her as a figure from the classical world. So that's really interesting and we can actually identify her because she's holding this apple and that's how we know she's Venus. Another shocking thing about this is she's nude. It's a nude portrait of a very prominent woman. So I wanted to now turn this to you and ask you, how do you think this might have been handled by a Baroque sculptor, by someone like Bernini? There probably would have been a little bit more going on. We know that Bernini loved to have kind of this wild movement in his drapery, but more importantly, what is Neoclassical about this? How is this Neoclassical in spirit and in form? Well, clearly this imitates the look of classical sculpture, but it also has a little bit of that elegance and gracefulness that Canova was famous for. But really it's this tone and this, the greater ideals of classical art that Canova was trying to infuse in his portrait sculpture of this woman. And that's really what the Neoclassical artists were interested in doing and I think that's what makes this portrait so unusual and so famous.